Fernandez, an ABC reporter, was racially abused by a female fellow passenger on a Sydney bus for about 15 minutes, while taking his two-year-old daughter to child care. (ABC –The Drum TV 11 Feb 2013)

Some of the offenders were charged by Police for assault but others are yet to be investigated.

Victims of racial abuse should lodge a complaint with the Anti-Discrimination Board for racial vilification under Section 20C & D of the NSW Anti-Discrimination Act 1977

20C Racial vilification unlawful

(1) It is unlawful for a person, by a public act, to incite hatred towards, serious contempt for, or severe ridicule of, a person or group of persons on the ground of the race of the person or members of the group

20D Offence of serious racial vilification

(1) A person shall not, by a public act, incite hatred towards, serious contempt for, or severe ridicule of, a person or group of persons on the ground of the race of the person or members of the group by means which include:

(a) threatening physical harm towards, or towards any property of, the person or group of persons, or

(b) inciting others to threaten physical harm towards, or towards any property of, the person or group of persons.

These sorts of incidents of racial taunts on public transport were quite rampant in the 1960s and, worryingly, are now reappearing 50 years later despite the progress of multiculturalism in Australia. This behaviour must be condemned and should not be just accepted as normal in a civilised society that we claim Australia is.

In the early 1980s, British suburban trains had notices warning commuters of unlawful activities. Perhaps, the Transport Ministry should consider putting up public notices on all forms of public transport to warn against racist behaviour, and to emphasise that such behaviour, acts of racism and racial vilification is in breach of the Anti-Discrimination Act 1977.

We appeal to the NSW Government, through its Transport Ministry, to ensure Australians of any cultural and linguistic background should not be subjected to public abuse from bigoted and racist people. This issue also embraces the physical safety of travellers on public transport.

The Multicultural Communities Council of New South Wales is deeply shocked to learn that an Indian restaurant owner was bashed in front of his family in an unprovoked racial attack on Monday 14 December 2015 (The Collie Mail, Ballarat, Victoria 15 December).

The attack left Sumeet Anand with injuries to his face and left eye and his family members traumatised after having witnessed this savage attack. Sumeet has lived in Australia for 35 years and this is the first occasion he has ever faced such an unpleasant situation

We in NSW are deeply concerned with growing incidents of racial violence and hope the Victorian Police will apprehend the attackers as soon as possible and bring them to justice.

In the meantime, we support the Ballarat Indian Association in their endeavours to assist Mr Anand and ensure the full weight of the law is brought to bear to the assailants. I also hope that Dr Sundram Sivamalai, a Commissioner of the Victorian Multicultural Commission will assist Mr Anand to seek justice”.

You paid more tax than 579 major companies. Really. That’s one in three paying zero company tax, including half of all foreign companies. 1

These are the shocking revelations from the Tax Office ‘naughty’ list released just yesterday of how little company tax was paid by 1500 major companies in 2013-14. We checked it twice.

But whilst billions in company tax are lost by the community, senior Cabinet Grinch Scott Morrison took $1.7 billion from aged care and Medicare. His actual response to the backlash? “Show us the alternatives.”2

Here’s one. Use this new information to truly crack down on the corporate tax dodgers and spare our most vulnerable seniors.

Public pressure has worked before to make this government take the very first steps on corporate tax dodging. And the media is all over this story right now, with Facebook and Twitter boiling over with outrage. But in order to get real reform, we have to channel all that public anger at the people with the power to act.

All in all, the 579 companies that paid no tax have a combined revenue of $405 billion. How can so much revenue go un-taxed when just 0.25% of it could reverse Mr Morrison’s cuts to Medicare and age care this week?

Now that we know how big a problem corporate tax dodging is, what we do next will determine whether this is just a story forgotten by Christmas or a landmark in the end of rampant corporate tax dodging.

Thanks for speaking up,

Daney, Ruby, Mark and Nat, for the GetUp team

PS – Speaking of grubby business by big corporations – did you see the news last night? The Queensland Government has been caught hiding plans to build a second port for coal company Adani.

Late last night, explosive Freedom of Information documents revealed their plans to build the port — including dredging up to half a million cubic metres of seabed on the Great Barrier Reef coast. It’s the latest and most egregious display of the unprecedented power the coal industry has over our Government.

Right now, Federal Environment Minister Greg Hunt is deciding whether to approve Adani’s massive Abbot Point port expansion. But if enough of us get this story out, we can make sure there’s no way he can just tick-and-flick the approval. Click here to share the news on Facebook?

GetUp is an independent, not-for-profit community campaigning group. We use new technology to empower Australians to have their say on important national issues. We receive no political party or government funding, and every campaign we run is entirely supported by voluntary donations. If you’d like to contribute to help fund GetUp’s work, please donate now! To unsubscribe from GetUp, please click here.

Our team acknowledges that we meet and work on the land of the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation. We wish to pay respect to their Elders – past, present and future – and acknowledge the important role all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people continue to play within Australia and the GetUp community.

Now one of Sydney’s biggest cleaning companies stands accused of systematic underpayment of international students on its staff.

85 per cent of cleaners in Australia are overseas students trying to support their studies. They’re also one of the biggest money spinners for the Australian economy, bringing in $18 billion a year.

This investigation by reporter Sarah Whyte comes off the back of a year of high-profile stories of exploitation and the Federal Government is now stepping in.

SARAH WHYTE, REPORTER: As the sun dips over Sydney’s iconic skyline and office workers are preparing for the commute home, another group of workers start their shifts.

One company, BIC Services Australia, has the lion’s share of cleaning contracts in Sydney’s CBD.

BIC promotes itself as a caring and responsible employer.

BIC SERVICES CORPORATE VIDEO (male voiceover): Cleaning costs should not be driven down any further. Let us work together to improve productivity and quality of life for cleaning staff.

SARAH WHYTE: Does BIC treat its workers well?

OMNARAYAN SHARMA, FORMER BIC EMPLOYEE: No.

SARAH WHYTE: Why not?

OMNARAYAN SHARMA: Because I always see BIC treating the workers as a slave.

SARAH WHYTE: Workers are alleging rampant underpayment and underwork by BIC. Most of them are international students. Their visa conditions restricts them to work only 20 hours a week, so many work off the books. Far from home and with little English, they are ripe for exploitation.

CHEERAVIT KHAN, FORMER BIC EMPLOYEE (voiceover translation): I was very surprised as I didn’t expect it to happen in this country, which has very strict laws. I have just arrived only two months ago and I didn’t expect this to happen to me.

SARAH WHYTE: In October, Cheeravit Khan came to Australia from Thailand with his wife to study English. Only last month, he was fired by BIC.

Struggling to pay his bills, he had told his manager he needed to find more work.

CHEERAVIT KHAN (voiceover translation): He was not happy and told me that he wouldn’t pay me for all work I’d done. He asked me to leave the room and take off my company uniform.

SARAH WHYTE: Did you ever get paid for your job?

CHEERAVIT KHAN (voiceover translation): I didn’t get any money, not at all. I didn’t get paid because I didn’t work for a month, as agreed. He then said they wouldn’t pay me.

SARAH WHYTE: BIC confirmed that an employee named Cheeravit did work for them, but says he walked off the job and had not returned to collect his payment.

CHEERAVIT KHAN (voiceover translation): I feel really, really angry because for that amount of money, I could have survived for two or three weeks.

SARAH WHYTE: Cheeravit is not the only cleaner claiming to be underpaid by BIC. On Friday, the union took the company to the Federal Court with claims of breaches of the Fair Work Act.

The union has also identified underpayments of about $450,000.

Of the 197 cleaners audited by the union, it claims 93 were underpaid between May, 2014 and April this year.

Om Sharma says this not a new problem for the company.

OMNARAYAN SHARMA: I was doing the toilet cleaning in BIC and I use to clean nine levels with seven shower screens. And they use to give me four hours a day to clean those all things, which is not – which was not possible to finish. And it was like two people’s job and I had to work more than five hours a day to finish my job.

SARAH WHYTE: Om, a student from Nepal, worked for BIC or three years. He left in 2013.

OMNARAYAN SHARMA: The managers used to treat the cleaners as a slave, yeah, which I never like, and in the beginning, I just use to ignore them, but later on, it was too much for me.

SARAH WHYTE: When you say slave, what did they do to you?

OMNARAYAN SHARMA: Like, they use to yell on us, they use to scold us, they use to push us to do extra jobs, which use to take a lot of our time and they didn’t pay us properly. I just feel very bad about that, but I couldn’t do anything because I had only one job and as I’m a student, I had to survive in Australia, I had to pay my bills, so I just had to keep quiet and keep going on.

SARAH WHYTE: Om started keeping a diary of his hours, recording his treatment. It showed he was working overtime every night but not being paid for it. He encouraged other cleaners to do the same.

And how much money do you think BIC owes you?

OMNARAYAN SHARMA: It’s all together around $6,000 they owe me.

SARAH WHYTE: BIC denies that they owe any money to Om, saying he was a union representative who resigned on good terms. They also say they were concerned about his job performance.

The union warn that BIC is just one fragment of a broken industry.

MEL GATFIELD, UNITED VOICE: The cleaning industry is a contracting industry and what you see is just a race to the bottom. Building owners put out contracts on very low rates and cleaning contractors have to complete to get those rates, and through that process, each part just plays off one against the other and cleaners are left behind.

SARAH WHYTE: 2015 has been a year of high-profile exploitation cases, mostly involving foreign workers.

The issue is so serious that a high-level ministerial working group has been formed

MICHAELIA CASH, EMPLOYMENT MINISTER: The exploitation of workers in Australia, whether they are foreign workers or Australian workers, is not tolerated. This government will be as tough on those seeking to exploit foreign and domestic workers as we have been on people smugglers. So be warned: the Government is on to you and we will hold you to account.

SARAH WHYTE: But according to BIC, this is not a case of exploitation, rather an attempt by the union to blackmail the company into signing a new cleaner’s agreement. BIC declined an interview with 7.30.

BIC claim that the union is running a blackmail campaign against them. What do you say to that?

MEL GATFIELD: We’re not trying to blackmail anyone. We’re trying to work with the industry. We went to BIC and said there is rampant underpayments in these sites. We looked at 11 sites, not all of their sites, we looked at a couple of hundred cleaners and we found systematic underpayments.

SARAH WHYTE: For Cheeravit, the way BIC treated him still haunts him.

CHEERAVIT KHAN (voiceover translation): I just plan to finish my study quickly and I want to go back to my country because I feel that this country is not a safe place for me.

SARAH WHYTE: BIC told 7.30 Cheeravit would be paid if he goes to the head office.

If you could say something to BIC now, what would you ask them for?

OMNARAYAN SHARMA: I only want to say that this kind of company need to get closed. They need to get closed. They – they should not – like, they should not be running till now.